I want to commend to your attention an excellent article by John Lee of the Centre for International Security Studies at the University of Sydney. The article discusses how the Chinese Communist Party has, er, burnished China’s history to promote a specific geopolitical agenda. Here’s a snippet:
The argument that China is unchanging and its dynasties never expansionist is nonsense. Like all imperial dynasties, expansion was a bloody, constant, opportunistic and ruthless affair.
That’s only the tip of the iceberg. The ancient history of China as it’s known to practically all Chinese and Westerners alike is a willful fabrication by Sung dynasty scholars. That China’s history is 5,000 years long in a way distinguished from, say, Poughkeepsie’s, is just one example of that fabrication.
The real story that’s arising slowly and painstakingly from the archaeological record is less glorious and a lot more interesting than the legends we’ve been lead to believe.
Read the whole thing.
I studied East and Southeast Asia for my Master’s, and the popular history is radically different than what is taught by actual Asianists. China’s history has been one of continual and often brutal warfare, equally against internal and external enemies. Imperialism was practiced throughout the dynasties, particularly in the south where Vietnam was repeatedly occupied for centuries.
The Chinese were particularly adept at developing weapons. Contrary to what I was taught as a child, that the Chinese used gunpowder for fireworks, the Sung employed rockets, bombs, ballistic missiles, mines, chemical warheads and numerous other inventions as early as the 12th Century. The ancient Chinese didn’t play around when it came to war.
China’s history has been one of continual and often brutal warfare, equally against internal and external enemies.
So they’re just like everyone else….
Of course. I realized this when reading about the history of martial arts. You wont find people more obsessed with documenting and keeping track of things than the Japanese. And their oldest schools that still exist are a bit over 600 years. Something 5,000 years….total Bravo Sierra.
The silliness of it all is that we know very little about England, Germany, or France 600 years ago. Yes, we have a few records. Who wrote them and why? Why do we believe that what the historical archives say is true and The Canterbury Tales or La Divina Commedia aren’t?